


Strawberry Milkshakes

by just_a_velleity



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Greaser!lock, Greaserlock, High School AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 04:33:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_a_velleity/pseuds/just_a_velleity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oops I fell in love with the greaserlock AU.</p><p>In which John ends up in a poodle skirt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strawberry Milkshakes

**Author's Note:**

> I fell in love with the greaserlock 'verse and this is what happened. For mindpalaceofversailles and her lovely drawing here (http://mindpalaceofversailles.tumblr.com/post/47908267874/yes-that-is-john-in-a-poodle-skirt-theyre-going)

It’s all going fine until the day John arrives at school and finds someone parked in the spot where he always chains up his bike.  John is a creature of habit, and he’s not happy with some newcomer stealing his spot right in the shade.  He’s about to tell the guy off when he interrupts.

“Staring at something?”

Sarcastic sneer? Check.

The boy sits there on the hood of the Chevy, bomber jacket collar turned up, glaring at the world with the sort of contempt John reserves for gym class. The girls have clearly already taken notice—there’s a stream of furtive, flirty glances that the mysterious stranger either doesn’t notice or ignores. He’s just exactly the kind of boy they all fall for, too: dark, oiled-back hair, cigarette dangling between long fingers. Yet another slick, surly guy to add to the torment of high school. Wonderful.

\---

John’s forgotten all about the mystery new kid by 3rd period and is just settling in at his lab table, chatting with Molly across the way, when he lopes in. There really isn’t another word for the way he walks: those long, slow, arrogant steps that say he owns the place. John hates him already.

“Settle down, everyone. We have a new student.  Class, this is Sherlock Holmes,” says Ms. Ruben.

Figures. A pretentious, stuck-up name for a pretentious, stuck-up boy.

“John, Sherlock’s going to be your lab partner.”

“I’m fine working with Molly, thanks.”

“And I much prefer to work alone,” says Sherlock.

“Too bad for the both of you. We require partners in this class,” she says, and John can feel the resentment building. Yet another too-cool-for-it guy who will do nothing but copy his lab notes before class.

John’s expectations are turned upside down. Sherlock is shockingly, mercifully quiet—he smells of cigarette smoke and radiates sheer arrogance, but at least John isn’t being taunted.

John raises his hand to explain the reaction of sodium hydroxide and water and is correct as usual. This class is easy for him—most are, actually, with the exception of gym. He’d have liked it except for the football jocks knocking him to the ground every other minute. He swears tennis isn’t a contact sport, but apparently they haven’t been informed of that.

He turns back to Sherlock, expecting a sarcastic smoke ring puffed into his face, but gets an eyebrow raised in approval instead. Well. Maybe he isn’t as terrible as John’s been imagining. He sneaks  a look at Sherlock’s lab notebook: meticulous, angular writing and scaled diagrams copied exactly off the board. This boy is a contradiction in terms if John has ever seen one.

John isn’t one to pry, though, and Sherlock isn’t talkative in the slightest. They keep a tacit understanding only to speak to each other when absolutely necessary: “Pass the vials” and “Hand me the saline solution” are the only words they exchange during the entire hour. John decides that’s a pretty good state of affairs. Much better, anyway, than the “four eyes” and “nerd” he’d expected from someone like this.

\---

John comes back to school the next day and ties his bike chain around a tree. He isn’t about to challenge Sherlock and his shiny new Chevy, not with the entire football team crowded around him, angling for a look at the car and the new boy that belongs to it. All he has to do is drive up, and suddenly he’s the envy of the school. John hates him a little for it.

One of the guys—Charlie, Mike, they all look the same—leans up against the car.

“What’re you gonna name her?”

“Name?” Sherlock asks, and the way he says it drips condescension. Okay, John can get on board with taking the jocks down a notch.

“Sure, you gotta name her. I’ve already got mine picked out: Millie.”

“Seems infantile.”

That elicits protests from the guys. John, for one, is dubious that they even know what “infantile” means.

Sherlock sighs. “Fine, if you insist. It’ll be Yorick.”

John smiles into his math textbook. Surprising doesn’t even begin to describe this boy.

“Yorick? What the hell kind of name is that?”

“Mine,” Sherlock says, and boy, can he end a conversation when he wants to.

\---

They never speak in class. John is curious about the chain-smoking, Shakespeare-knowing mystery sitting next to him, but he isn’t about to ask. He sneaks quick, darting glances at Sherlock’s lab notebook as if the secret behind the world’s most puzzling boy lies in precipitation reactions.

\---

It’s a couple weeks later that Ms. Ruben assigns them projects with their lab partners. Sherlock is notably absent that day, and John dreads the thought of having to tell him about it.  Boys like John aren’t supposed to talk to the rebels. Cause or not, they’re nothing but trouble on fire, fast girls and faster cars. John’s a straight-A picket fence kind of boy, and his world is far, far away from the racing docks.

\---

Later that day, John ducks out of history to go to the bathroom. He’s washing his hands when he sees a dart of movement in the corner of his eye, and then he notices the still-glowing cigarette butt on the floor. Wary, he leans out the window, craning around to see who it is—he’s been ambushed one too many times to ignore this. John is teetering precariously on the windowsill when he finally spots him.

“Sherlock! What on earth are you doing?”

Sherlock takes a long drag.

“Skipping class.”

“But there’s a lecture!”

 “Dull. Why go to class when I can converse with nerds about to fall out of windows? Much more entertaining.”

Sherlock’s remark turns out to be uncannily accurate. John finds himself tumbling out the window, landing in an inelegant jumble of elbows and knees. He’s making some attempt at brushing himself off—his mother is going to kill him if he rips this sweater—when he hears Sherlock snicker.

“Shut up. You’re the one skipping class. I could turn you in, you know.”

“Empty threat. We both know you won’t—I’m too intriguing a mystery.” He smirks.

“What makes you think you’ve got me roped into your Mr. Mysterious-cool-guy routine?”

“The fact that you called it that, for one.”

John doesn’t exactly know how to answer that, because it’s painfully true. He’s invested in this mystery of a boy, as much as he doesn’t want to be, and apparently it’s more obvious than he wants it to be.

“C’mon, let’s go,” says Sherlock, gesturing out towards the street.

“I can’t skip class, Sherlock.”

“Adorable how you really think this matters. Be _interesting,_ for once in your ordinary life.”

John is slightly miffed at being called ordinary, but there’s a tug in the corner of his brain, that little locked-away piece that wants to ditch class and floor it until he hits California. Once couldn’t hurt, he supposes.

“All right, where are we going?”

Sherlock flashes him an impish grin.

“You’ll see.”

He takes off running down the street, and it takes all the breath John has just to keep up. They finally end up in a little park a mile or so away, John gasping for breath and Sherlock beaming.

“See? Much more interesting than whatever pointless lecture you were going to listen to.”

“Sherlock. I’ve just run a mile at least. You have a car. There is something wrong with this picture.”

“Come on, you can hear it start a block away. We’d have been caught in a hot minute. You really haven’t skipped enough class.”

With that, Sherlock flops onto the grass and flips open a lighter.

“Smoke?”

“Thanks, I think I’ve had my fair share of rebellion for today.”

“Suit yourself.”

“So… why are we here?”

“John, I really don’t have time for an existential crisis right now.”

“No, you idiot. Why are we here, in this park?”

“Curiosity, mostly. Wanted to see if you’d come.”

“Well, here I am.”

“Yes. The question is why. I’m a stranger—you don’t know anything about me beyond that I’m exceptionally good at chemistry, drive a car you find ostentatious, and smoke like wildfire.”

“And you’ve read Shakespeare.”

“Wait, you… oh. Oh! You may have a hope of being interesting after all, John the Hamlet-reading nerd.”

“Hey!”

“Admit it, it’s true. And you enjoy it. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. Better that than the vapid idiocy of most of the people at this school.”

There John agrees with him. They don’t talk much beyond that, as Sherlock sits there brooding, tracing something John can’t read into the dirt. Nervous tic, maybe, smoker’s habit, but for some reason John is mesmerized by pale fingers trailing along the grass. John lies back eventually, tries to look for shapes in the clouds, but he’s more distracted by the planes taking off from the Air Force base just outside of town. He can’t help but wonder who’s on them, who’s just seen the last they’ll ever see of their wife. Morbid, he knows, but John can’t remember a time when he didn’t contemplate the fate of random passersby on the street, wondering whether they’d  be hit by a car ten minutes from now or live another sixty years. _He_ sure won’t, and he’s made peace with that—he’s going off to serve in Korea as soon as he’s out of high school.  It’s the only way to pay for med school.  Doctor, wife, two kids and a dog—it’s the only dream he’s ever been allowed to have. Problem is, there are lists in the papers every day of the dead. John finds a twisted sort of peace in imagining his name printed in neat black-and-white type—a name only, nothing about his father or his glasses or his inability to play football. It’s an escape, and maybe it’s running away, but dying young seems preferable to the apple-pie life that’s been shoved down his throat. He tells himself he wants it: success, contentment, the American Dream, but more and more lately he’s gotten the inexplicable urge to get in the car and just drive. He’s lost in a daydream of jungle vines and beige canvas when Sherlock interrupts.

“I’m bored. Let’s go.”

John’s startled out of the hazy stupor by the sudden sharpness in Sherlock’s voice.

“Ever changeable, you are,” John comments dryly.

“Just easily bored. Come on, there’s something I need to show you.”

“That reminds me. I did actually need to talk to you. We’re assigned a chemistry project together—we need to investigate a particular element in depth.”

“Perfect. We can do it at my house. What element?”

“Cesium.”

“Wonderful! I’ve already got some.”

John isn’t sure he wants to know where Sherlock got that, and he decides it’s safer not to ask.

They set off, this time at a more human pace, to get Sherlock’s car. It’s flashy and sleek, the kind of car little boys have on posters in their rooms. Sherlock looks perfectly at home in the Chevy, with its shiny chrome and leather—there’s something about the sleek lines of the car that reminds John of him. Sherlock seems to melt into the car as it purrs, relaxing into it like it’s built for him. John, on the other hand feels horribly out of place in a car that probably cost more than his entire house. He drives far too fast and John feels like the whole town’s watching, but Sherlock is blissfully unaware. Maybe he just likes the attention—he’s the kind of boy who would look at home in the spotlight. All John does is pray to God his mother didn’t pick today to run errands. When they get to Sherlock’s house—mansion is perhaps a better word—Sherlock turns off the ignition.

“Stealing this baby from Mycroft was the best decision of my criminal career.”

John doesn’t even want to ask what the lesser decisions were, and he decides ignorance might be best in this case. He starts making his way to the front door, but pauses when Sherlock fails to follow.

“Coming?”

“She’s making a funny noise. I just need to check this out real quick. Help me out, would you?”

John’s not sure he knows the difference between a hammer and a drill, but it’s not like there’s another option.

Sherlock’s stripped down to a white t-shirt and jeans, rustling around in a toolbox for who knows what. He’s popped the hood on the Chevy, and John takes a cautious glance in.

Sherlock snickers. “She’s not gonna bite you.”

“Wouldn’t be so sure,” John mutters, and he can feel Sherlock’s amused smile on the back of his neck.

“Hand me the monkey wrench, would you?”

John hands him something he hopes to God is a monkey wrench and Sherlock laughs. He pops his head out from under the hood, grease already streaked on his nose and eyebrow.

“The monkey wrench, John.”

“Perhaps now would be a good time to tell you I have no idea what the hell a monkey wrench is.”

Sherlock sighs and shakes his head. “Boy, do I have some things to teach you.”

John ends up holding the flashlight, something he can mercifully do without messing everything up, and watches Sherlock work. There’s a scientific precision about the way he handles the tools, careful and exacting. He’s got nimble violinist’s fingers, John thinks, and there’s a brief and disconcerting moment when John imagines what they’d feel like in his hair. Where that thought came from, he has no idea, and he quickly pushes it from his mind. There are gears and rods and things John doesn’t even know the name of strewn about the driveway, and the car looks more broken than it did at the beginning, but Sherlock’s got a smile on his face like John’s never seen on anyone but a child.

“And now to put it all back together,” Sherlock announces happily.

“You enjoy this?”

“Immensely.”

“Why, though? It’s metal bits and grease.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows crease and he touches the car protectively.

“I’m tinkering, and it’s a fascinating pursuit. Gearboxes and pistons and carburetors, they all function together in this marvelous machine, and I’m making it better. It’s enormously satisfying.”

John’s still baffled, but the car’s name is Yorick, so it can’t be all bad.

“You know, we should probably get a start on that chemistry project.”

“Necessary, I suppose,” Sherlock says, and he’s back to the peculiar haughty way he has of speaking. He runs a comb through his hair, wipes the grease off his brow, and locks up the toolbox before heading up to the house, and John gets the impression it’s by muscle memory.

Sherlock bounds up the steps, all lean and wiry motion. John wouldn’t normally have trouble following, but at the moment he’s a bit overwhelmed by the sheer immensity of the house, the dark wood and stone that announce not rich but wealthy. Sherlock’s brooding intensity fits the house well, but there’s something staid about it that’s the last thing he’d use to describe Sherlock. 

John follows Sherlock up to what is presumably his bedroom, but there isn’t a bed in sight. Every available surface is covered in notes, test tubes, gears and bits and odds and ends. This is anything but ordinary. Sherlock goes rifling through cabinets, opening drawers and staring intensely at the notes tacked to his bedroom wall as if they’ll reveal the secret behind the universe. There’s some sort of organization system, that much is evident, but where it begins or ends John couldn’t say.  Sherlock emerges at last from the box he had his head buried in, a triumphant look on his face.

“Got it.”

“Good?”

John is hesitant. Cesium is, after all, explosive, and he’s not sure he trusts the boy who’s practically on fire around volatile chemicals.

“Oh, relax. I only explode things purposely.”

“Somehow that’s not comforting.”

\---

And suddenly it’s homecoming, John’s least favorite time of the year. Bonfires, football, letter jackets and going steady—it’s all the things he’s never been a part of and never wanted to. Everything around him is abuzz with high school gossip draped in garish streamers, and John doesn’t think he can take it any longer. Even Molly’s succumbed to the fever, planning her dress and lusting after some upperclassman named Greg. John loves Molly—she’s the closest thing he has to a friend, but he’s gonna wring her neck if she mentions his dreamy smile one more time.

At least that’s what he thinks until the day he has to see the crestfallen look on Molly’s face as she watches Greg ask Amanda to the dance in front of the entire cafeteria. She won’t meet John’s eyes for the rest of the day, and he goes home feeling guilty as sin for being fed up with her. He doesn’t want to go to the dance, doesn’t even want to think about the words suit and boutonniere, but leaving Molly alone with her new bobby socks and pressed pink dress seems cruel.

John hands her daisies the next day, and her grateful smile gets rid of at least some of the torture of having to go. When John gets there to pick her up, she looks… nice. Her hair is pulled back and she’s wearing lipstick. He forces a smile, tells her she looks pretty—both because he means it and because it’s what she needs to hear. They both know this isn’t what they want to be doing, but isn’t sacrifice what friends do?

John regrets his noble sacrifice as soon as he walks through the festooned gym doors. Suits and ties everywhere, girls in flouncy pastel dresses far too innocent for them. Molly is off with friends the second they walk in, leaving John alone, hovering by the punch bowl. He watches the seconds go by on the clock, tick by excruciating tick, as Little Girl plays on the loudspeakers. Funny enough, he used to like that song. It will never be the same again. Couples are swinging by in a whirl of taffeta and lust, and it’s only because he can’t strand Molly that John doesn’t bolt straight out the door. Some girl he doesn’t know asks him to dance, and he’s so shocked he says yes. She looks vaguely familiar—one of the football players’ girlfriends?—but John couldn’t be sure. He’s too busy trying not to trip over his own too-big shoes to even talk to her.  After the song finishes, she walks away giggling to her friends, and John gets the distinct feeling he’s being made fun of.

It’s when Sherlock walks in that John nearly hits the floor. John thought he’d be too cool for this, off smoking a pack with the other slickers, flirting with death down at the docks. Anywhere but here, at some cheesy high school dance. He appears to be dateless, and not for lack of girls—every female eye in the place turned when he walked in. He’s just not interested, apparently. He cuts a good figure in black, hair slicked back and the same aloof look as always. John almost wonders if he’s been bribed to be here, some sort of trained assassin—he definitely looks the part.

John is suddenly and unceremoniously ripped from his musings by someone he can’t see, and his yells are muffled by a tie stuffed in his mouth. _Damn, damn, damn_ —a stream of garbled curse words screamed into the tie, and his next thought is “my mother’s going to wash my mouth with soap.” This life is messing with his priorities. He’s being dragged away from the dance floor, and no one seems to notice invisible goody-two-shoes John Watson being kidnapped from homecoming. “That was _my_ girlfriend” is the only explanation he gets.  He kicks and writhes, but whoever’s got him by the neck is much stronger than he is, and he’s shoved into a storage closet, lights out, door locked. He fumbles around frantically, wishing he’d learned somewhere how to pick a lock.

When a slit of light finally shows, John’s almost relieved. Then he sees the face of Joe Henry, linebacker for the Poplar Mountain Tigers, and he knows it’s hopeless.

“Hey, four-eyes. Got a present for you.”

John doesn’t bother to answer. He couldn’t, anyways, with a gag in his mouth, and sarcasm probably won’t help him right now.

Three more boys—he doesn’t see their faces, they’ve blindfolded him now, but he can pick out three distinct voices—arrive, tearing John’s Sunday suit off and shoving him into something scratchy and tight. They haul him away, and when he hears the rumble of an engine he knows he’s in trouble. He can sense movement, knows they’re headed somewhere fast, but they’ve got him pinned and blindfolded in the backseat and at the moment he’s more concerned with not having a heart attack than figuring out where he is.

Finally the blindfold is pulled off. The lights are blindingly bright, and it takes him a good few seconds to figure out where he is.

It’s only a moment after that when he realizes what he’s wearing.

White blouse, full pink poodle skirt, and a damned petticoat. Yes, damned, it can go straight to hell for all John cares. He’s dressed like a girl and standing in the middle of Hardy’s Diner, where every high schooler in the county is going to see him if he doesn’t get out of there fast.

Unfortunately, his car is at least three miles away in God knows what direction, and before he can begin to formulate some sort of plan, the last person on earth he wants to see saunters in.

It’s Sherlock, Sherlock with a cigarette dangling between his lips and a leather jacket over his button-down and dress pants. Anyone else would look ridiculous, but he comes off looking like a slick test pilot. John’s praying like hell he doesn’t notice, but how could he not? John’s in a hot pink poodle skirt, for Chrissakes, standing in the middle of the diner like a stunned deer.

For a second John thinks he’s somehow gotten away with it, as Sherlock slides into the bar and orders a strawberry milkshake.

Then he turns over his shoulder and winks— _winks_ —at John.

“Like the new look, sweetheart.”

John spits something out that might have been intelligible if he were Dutch.

The waitress slides the milkshake down the counter with a napkin that John would bet a cool fifty has her number on it—they nearly always do with boys like him.

Sherlock leans over to John, something mischievous in his eyes.

“What do you say we get out of here?”

John’s too stunned to say anything, but Sherlock apparently takes that as some sort of yes and drags him out. On the way out the door, he tosses the napkin in the trash.

“Come on, let’s get the hell out of this town,” Sherlock says as he keys the ignition.

“Could I maybe get some clothes first?”

“I think you look swell. Pink suits you.” Cue the glint of a teasing smile.

“Shut up.”

“Alright, fine. There are some extra things of mine in the trunk. They’ll be a little long, but you’d rather that than the poodle skirt, I’d wager.”

John’s more thankful than he’s been in his entire life for jeans four inches too long and a shirt that threatens to drown him. When he comes back, Sherlock starts a bit, and he’s not quite sure why.

“Thanks, Sherlock.”

“Always there to save your pretty pink ass.”

“Don’t you ever mention that again.”

“Shucks, John, you looked cute,” Sherlock says, adopting a sarcastic drawl.

“Just drive.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. Where to?”

“Anywhere but here.”

Sherlock floors the gas, and John doesn’t even want to think about how fast they’re going, but it’s nice to lose himself in the blur of dusk and yellow stripes whizzing by. They’re both silent, Sherlock drumming a rhythm on the wheel and John fighting a losing battle with his brain. When he no longer recognizes the road signs, John decides to ask.

“Sherlock, where are we?”

“Not really sure. ‘Anywhere’ wasn’t exactly specific, and I was in the mood to burn asphalt.”

It’s as good an explanation as any, and they keep driving, miles of empty highway disappearing into midnight. The thrum of the engine is comforting, and John begins to see why Sherlock loves the car so much. He’s near to drifting off when the motion stops.

Sherlock gets out without a word, and John follows. They’re parked at the edge of a boardwalk in some run-down deserted Carolina beach town. Waves threaten to buckle the worn wood of the dock and the storefronts have broken, boarded-up windows—the whole town looks one good gust away from collapse. They’ve made it to the ocean, impressive given that it’s a good four hours from home. Whether it’s because Sherlock drives like a madman or it’s later than he thinks, John’s not sure, and it’s freeing to realize he doesn’t actually care.

When he turns around, Sherlock’s lying back on the hood, hands behind his head and sleeves pushed up.

“Nice, isn’t it, running away?” Sherlock asks, staring at something on the horizon.

“You have no idea.”

He pats the hood and John sits down, wary of damaging it.

“Relax, it’s not _that_ fragile.”

Somehow they both end up on their backs, staring up at the glittering sky.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Sherlock asks.

“I’d never really thought about it, but yeah.”

“You ever think about running away for real?”

“When I was little, yeah. Now? Away, not so much. More like towards.”

“Towards what?”

“The war.”

And John tells him, tells the prodigy with a rebel streak all the things he wouldn’t even admit to himself. He’d rather die young and bloody than live out miserable years in a nothing-special town. When he dreams, it’s of endless highways and the smell of gasoline, the freedom of a lead foot and a stolen white flag. He doesn’t feel like there’s anything worth staying for.

“I might be worth staying for,” Sherlock says, and suddenly there’s a hand on the knee of his jeans and a face far closer to his than he was expecting.

John breathes out.

“Not long, of course. I have no plans to get old. But I’m starting to think here might not be so bad.”

In. Out. John’s heart is beating faster that he can keep up with as he searches Sherlock’s face in the dark.

“I could reconsider,” John manages, and thankfully Sherlock’s bolder than he is.

All of a sudden they’re pressed together, Sherlock with a finger hooked around John’s belt loop, and every inch of him is on fire. Sherlock doesn’t do anything slow, not driving or kissing. They’re tangled up quick, breathing heavy and fast, and John’s too lost in the way Sherlock’s tongue moves to notice the stars. Sherlock is kissing the picket fence straight out of him, leaving him breathless and heady, drunk on the scent of cigarettes and leather.

Sherlock breaks away a second.

“Think you could put off enlisting?”

His hands gripping Sherlock’s collar are all the answer he can manage, but Sherlock seems to understand. They’re crushed to each other, closer closer closer until John tastes faint strawberry on Sherlock’s tongue. John finds himself relaxing into Sherlock’s sighs, fading into sweet, smoky, lingering kisses until they see light peek out over the water. It’s late (or early—it’s that time when neither really suffices), John’s not even wearing his own clothes, and his mother’s probably going to murder him, but he thinks he might finally understand what content is.

For the rest of his life, John never orders any flavor but strawberry.

**Author's Note:**

> feedback/constructive criticism much appreciated (you can contact me at just-a-velleity on tumblr if you like)


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